Indian Billboard Mistakes Morgan Freeman For Nelson Mandela

Despite his convincing portrayal of the former South African president and activist in the film Invictus, Morgan Freeman is not Nelson Mandela. Unfortunately, no one was around to tell that to the folks of Coimbatore, a southern city in India, when a billboard was erected in the South African leader’s honor featuring a photo of Freeman instead of Mandela.

A local cloth merchant — who has only identified himself as Chandrashekhar — claims he privately paid for the billboard to go up in Mandela’s honor, but never saw the finished project before it went up.

Images of Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa and Mahatma Gandhi could also be seen on the billboard (correctly depicted) below Morgan’s smiling photo, along with the words: “We should be proud that we were part of an era when they lived.”

Sadly, this isn’t the first time Morgan has been mistaken for the freedom fighter. Following the former Mandela death, people on Twitter were seen tweeting in the activist’s memory using images of Morgan Freeman.